Superheroes in printed media (split)

<Split from Mini-nemesis bios thread>

Can't speak for Ameena, but I don't like comic books. I actually find the pictures distracting so it's harder to understand what's going on, and it's slower to read. If they wrote this stuff as "real" books I might be interested. 

I read a rather good X-Men novel a while ago, a spy thriller featuring Wolverine, Banshee, Mystique and the Black Widow.  There's also several comic-book themed novels not tied to the mainstream continuity, of which the best-known is "Soon I Will Be Invincible".

More like "tied to its own continuity," being outside Marvel or DC.

Silverleaf, there are novels available for both Marvel and DC, covering a lot of character options.

Haha did I mix up Calypso and Empyreon? WHOOPS  My bad guys

About Voss and Realm, that has never ever been confirmed and just what I infer from the card art. Sorry if I gave anyone the wrong impression.

Empyreon now makes a whole lot more sense though! In my Apostates Secrets thread I delved into a lot of Christianity themes being tied to both Apostate and the Cosmic Entity. Cap Cosmic as a member of the Prime Wardens probably plays a large part in that story line. The name Empyreon again is very close to Empyrean.

From wiki: “The Empyrean was thus used as a name for the firmament, and in Christian literature, notably the Divine Comedy, for the dwelling-place of God, the blessed, celestial beings so divine they are made of pure light, and the source of light and creation”

He must be related to the Cosmic Entity in some way. Maybe is he also part of “The Host”? 

I must strongly urge you to not actually read "Soon I Will Be Invincible."  It has clever prose, and so there's lots of great-sounding quotes floating around out there, but I have seldom been more let down by a "climax".

However, there are certainly lots of classic comic book stories adapted into novels.  The only one I have read (and can therefore recommend) is Kingdom Come, but that would be a lot less fun without knowing the continuity behind it.  I do hear rave reviews about "It's Superman!" though.

Really, I think the easiest way to pick up some comics continuity and see a wider assortment of characters without actually reading comics is probably the animated adaptations - Justice League Unlimited, Brave And The Bold, Young Justice, and Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes all made points of showcasing some more obscure characters from their respective continuities in different ways, and all of them are good shows (though I could not personally get into YJ's first season) - Wolverine And The X-Men and Ultimate Spiderman also tread some obscure ground, though I think each has big flaws.

… not sure if any of those have Moon-Knight in them, now that I think about it.  But they will give you multiple takes each on Blue Beetle and Iron Fist, so you're getting what's really important.

EDIT: Wow, that drifted off-topic, even for me.  Regarding Empyreon, I think it would be amazing (and very Jack Kirby) for the space laserdude and the dark angel to be on the same team, or at least come from the same source.  Thusfar, however, SotM has kept its magic and its sci-fi pretty carefully separate, so I assume they shall continue in that vein.

Yeah, I'd be concerned about how well novels would work with someone who knows very little of the background.

Animated TV stuff? Well the other problem I have with comic books is that my brains sees anything that's a cartoon and immediately assumes it's either for kids or it's some kind of silly comedy, and I can't persuade it otherwise no matter how much I try. It makes it impossible to take anything animated seriously. I'm the same with puppets.

What makes you say that would be Kirby-esque? Not arguing, just really curious. I have a lot of speculation tied up in that connection, anything you can share would be awesome.

Thank you Ironic. That was an awesome answer.

It's a mystery to me as well, to be honest. I bought Sentinels for my RPG club because we didn't have a super-themed game and it looked better than DC or Legendary. I was fully expecting to dislike it, being primarily a Eurogamer and not a comic fan. Decided I'd play once to see what it was like. Boom.

I guess it's just a good game. The gameplay's fun, the art and characters and stories are great, loads of variety and levels of challenge, and it's full of that puzzley crunchy assessing of various potential actions to try to improve the situation as much as possible that I love in Eurogames. It's somehow both thinky and mindlessly hitty. Works for me. 

It probably helps that superheroes are enough part of the general popculture that it's possible to recognize and appreciate the superhero tropes and themes that get referenced, and the tropes and themes mostly aren't medium-dependent.

Mostly, though, I think that it's just a good game.

Having read a rather bad trade of 1980s Green Lantern this afternoon, I find myself sympathetic with anyone who doesn't really want to read comics books.  They are often not held to high quality standards in writing, though the art is usually quite excellent, and I think of that as being more the point of a lot of comics.  There are certainly exceptions, the brilliant Neil Gaimans and Kurt Busieks of the world, writing their Kingdom Comes and their V for Vendettas; those are certainly literary achievements.  But there's also embarassingly awful soap opera and sci-fi so soft you could sink into it like quicksand, both in far larger quantities than the occasional excellence.  Carelessly wading in and reading just any old thing is a pretty sure recipie for having your intelligence insulted.

Is there another medium that you find has a better track record?

This will probably deserve a moderator split, soon, but I've been doing Supers in novels as a thing for a bit (actually - supers as novels in audiobook format- it's a long commute) and here's what I've read:

Soon I Will Be Invincible - which I enjoyed more than Ironic. While the ending wasn't everything I could have hoped for, it covered the character beats I needed to see. I will grant that it didn't end like a comic.

The "Ex-" series, Ex-heroes, Ex-patriots... Super hero after the zombies win fiction. You have to like both genres to like the series, I suppose, so I haven't picked up the third book, yet.

"Valveteen vs." I kinda love. At it's shallowest reading, the book is a series of silly short stories about a young woman who's power of making toys come to life was great as a teen hero, not so much as a twenty-something. At a deeper level, it is about how media chews through teen celebrities, and the costs associated with being one. I wish there were fewer f bombs I it so I could read it as a cautionary tale to my 4 year old in a couple of years.

Has anyone read Steelheart?

I don't go in much for comics, thus know very little about the Big Two of comicbook superheroes, but I like the genre if not the format. I also love the work of Brandon Sanderson and thus have read Steelheart, and loved it. The premise, for those who don't know, is that people suddeny started developing superpowers and all, without fail, turned evil. It's really rather good.

I'm also currently reading a (now-finished) web serial called Worm, which is a very realistic (and dark) look at superheroism and villainy. It's long (1.75 million words), but really very worth it.

you should read/listen to ‘In superhero years im dead’

good read (not sure it has an audio version though)

Thanks for the recommendation!  I'll add it to the queue.

Oh man, have I.

Bias Warning: Brandon Sanderson is my favorite living novelist.  His Mistborn Trilogy is my favorite fantasy series of all time.  And for all that it becomes more of a Cliche with each Invincible and Irredeemable we see, I am a sucker for a Bad Superman story*.  Clearly, I am predisposed to think Steelheart is good.

But in my defense, it really is quite good.  It's a great look at how scary being a "badass normal" is from the ground, it may be the best example I know for having a character fresh out of their normal life surrounded by craziness without making them a bland Everyman, and Steelheart himself is an especially sinister and scary Bad Superman.

It does have its flaws - most notably Sanderson's need to write sequel hooks into everything he does shines through.  But I like it best as a standalone book, and it certainly holds up as such.  I recommend it strongly, needless to say.

Ironic

* I mean that figuratively - stories about a Supermanlike figure who is also a bad guy.  Not stories about Superman himself which are bad - those are even more common, and not so enjoyable.

Worm was a really fascinating read.  It's very long, but worth it.

In addition to the ones already mentioned, I thought A Once Crowded Sky was a good Mooresian take on superheroes.

Then there is the forerunner to all superhero novels, Superfolks, which is fantastically fun even though it's coming up on 40 years at this point.  A ton of the ideas that Moore,Miller, et al, used in the 80's are in this novel from a decade earlier

Well to be fair, it is book 1 of a trilogy

I've been thinking of picking up Steelheart. Not really fond of zombies, so I gave the Ex- books a pass.

I've got H.E.R.O. - Metamorphosis by Kevin Rau on my Kindle to read.

It might be an apples and oranges comparison, but in general the small subset of movies based on comic books (as opposed to all of Hollywood) has something close to a 50/50 excellence/crap ratio, instead of the 10/90 that comics as a whole probably boils down to.  The Raimi Spider-Mans were fairly terrible, as were the third and fourth Batman movies, Green Lantern's not great, Daredevil was slightly tepid and Elektra was just ridiculous, the old Superman tetralogy (and its unofficial fifth entry, Superman Returns) vary from decent to awful, Sly Stallone's Judge Dredd was fun IMO but definitely not exactly good, and of course there was that 1994 The Punisher which was just a Rambo clone that claimed to be comics-based.  But conversely, you have Iron Man, Thor, both Hulk movies (the Ang Lee one was weird as heck but I considered it still reasonably good), Batman Begins and to a lesser Extent The Dark Knight (really, only Joker was much good in that one, but he counts for a lot), and for a very tenuous qualifier, The Incredibles.  I haven't seen Iron Man 2 and 3, The Avengers, the new Punisher or Dredd movies, Amazing Spider-Man or Man of Steel, but I've heard that most of these were well-reviewed.   So overall, if we grouped these movies into "great", "okay", and "bad", the piles would be roughly equal in size.  Whereas doing the same to comics would result in about a bookshelf or two worth of "great", a few truckloads of "okay", and a very literal mountain of absolute dreck (most of the absolute dreck titles you've probably never even heard of; I've found samplings of quite a few in the bargain bin of various comic stores, and wanted my dime back).

It's kind of an unfair comparison since the movies are generally based on the handpicked best (or at least okayest) of the comics.  But it works; Marvel Movies is batting about 900 from what I hear (I can personally confirm about half of it; the only one of the post-IM movies which I found slightly less than good was Incredible Hulk, and even that was pretty decent), and pretty much anything written by David S. Goyer is awesome.  Now if only someone would handpick the best of Hollywood's movies and turn them into usually-excellent comics…

The Rook by Daniel O'Malley

Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis

Emperor Mollusk Versus the Sinister Brain by A. Lee Martinez

Well, I just posted over in the other thread having not noticed this one had been split off...oops, lol.

But basically, the only graphic novel I've ever read is the Hobbit (I've read the proper version too, of course :)). I've never read a superhero graphic novel. I'm not interested in doing so. I'm not interested in superheroes in general, really - I've seen a few films and stuff (nothing particularly recent). I just like playing Sentinels 'cause it's such a cool game, with the co-operative play and the randomness generated by cards meaning that no two games are ever the same. I've mentioned before (plenty of times, I'm sure ;)) that Fantasy is my favourite genre - if Sentinels had been based solely in Fantasy-type stuff (or mythology...though of course it has some of that anyway), that would have just been the best, most amazing thing for me :D. Still, even as it is there are a few characters who I view as Fantasy-ish and who have somehow also ended up being my favourites heroes to play - the Bard and the Shapeshifter ;).

Nope, never heard of them - like I said, the only graphic novel I've ever read is the Hobbit, I'm not particularly interested in either graphic novels in general or superheroes and thus mainly play Sentinels because it's such a cool game due to being co-operative and having such a huge replay value. I think I mentioned in my other post (over in the other thread when I didn't realise this one had been split off) that I basically skip over anything posted on here which starts going into detail about (non-Sentinels) superheroes because usually I've never heard of them so I don't find it of interest to me. I prefer to read "proper books", preferably in the Fantasy genre. When it comes to roleplaying (either at tabletop or on a computer), again I prefer Fantasy but will take Sci-Fi on occasion. If I ever notice an advertisement for a new superhero game, it's not something I ever look into as it doesn't interest me.

Basically, I'm not into superheroes except at the most basic of levels and so have only got into Sentinels because of its gameplay. So if any wants to "omg wtf she doesn't like it?!?" about me on the forum, you can do it on any thread featuring detailed discussions about superheroes/graphic novels and not worry about me seeing it ;).

Also shows another aspect of just how cool >G are that they can attract fans who aren't even interested in their chosen genre ;).

If you want to read superhero novels you should check out George RR Martin's shared world Wild Cards series. They are my favoite book series.

Here's a listing of all the currently released books. Another will be out this summer: www.wildcardsonline.com/books.html

I pretty much completely agree with Ameena. Give me a real book with some dragons in it and I'm happy. Give me a thin book with pictures and I'll politely thank you and probably read it because you've made the effort to find it for me, but I can't see myself enjoying it like I'd enjoy something with more words where the pictures are all in my head.

Somehow, comics seem too easy. I like stuff that forces me to imagine things by myself rather than showing me everything. It's why I generally prefer books to movies. 

While I understand that it takes all kinds of fruit to make fruit cup, might we avoid prescribing what "real" literature is?  That is a rather harsh, arbitrary, and dismissive way of implying that you don't care for a particular form of writing and/or art.

I'm not saying that comics aren't literature, just that they aren't books in the traditional book sense. I don't think anyone would disagree that comic is a different art form to book. 

That's a perfectly reasonable distinction if those are your definitions.  I just know the terms "proper" and "real" were used to describe non-comic books, and that can have a rather strong implication that comics are "improper literature" or "not real books".  If that isn't the case, then I'm totally cool with it!  It's just a subject that I (and quite a few members of this forum, I'm sure) feel strongly about.

I don't actually see them as books. A book to me delivers its content almost exclusively through printed words (or spoken ones in the case of audiobooks), whereas in a comic the pictures are a major part of the content, without which the words don't convey enough information for the story to makes sense. Sure, both have pages and ink, but that's not a defining feature of a book. Audiobooks and ebooks are still books and they have neither. 

Again though, there's no value judgement here. I prefer literature without pictures to distract me, but that doesn't mean I'm saying comics are inferior (or in fact not literature) - just not my preference.

Comics are a graphic medium as opposed to a full prose medium. They both tell stories, but comics can, and do, tell stories without any words at all.

I’ve read the first several. To me they belong in a tonal genre along with things like Warhammer, etc., with which I no longer have much patience. Grimdark isn't for me, anymore. I think if you like Wildcards, you’d probably like the Ex-heroes series. My choice for literature is lighter right now.

That said, it was a large omission on my part to leave out Wildcards.  I have to concur that they are a seminal example of superheroes outside of the comic format.

     First off, Silverleaf I greatly respect you and love your contributions to this forum and know you are not denigrating comics. I also agree with you that comics are not books; they are in fact periodicals. That does not take anything away from them as a literary art form.

[Begin English Major Rant] 

     I greatly take issue with the statement that books cannot have pictures. By this definition anything written for young children (about 0-7 or so) does not qualify as a book, which I think we can agree is absurd. I think the 'novel' would be a better word choice than 'book' for your argument.

[End English Major Rant]

     For some added context to why this bothers me: I have a five year old that loves to read. Just last week, she finished her first chapter book. Not on of those 'I can read' or 'step into reading' books. A strait up, 100 page chapter book. One of the many ways we encouraged her was comics and a few books series that is mostly prose but also has comic pages as well. I feel that without picture books to get her through the earlier stages of when she was learning to read, she would have never got to the point where she was willing to sit down and read on her own time instead of playing or watching TV.

     If my tone or word choice in this post bothers anyone, let me know. I will remove the post or edit it.

People are assuming that I'm saying things which I'm absolutely not saying.

I didn't say that comics aren't literature. I said that comics aren't books, twice, but novels would certainly have been a better word. Comics aren't novels.

I didn't say that books can't have pictures. I said that the information in books (should have said novels) is primarily conveyed through the words. If you read the book out loud to someone they understand the majority or all of it without actually seeing the pages. Many children's books with pictures fall into this category too - the pictures are nice, and add to the enjoyment and may provide some extra info, but aren't strictly necessary for delivering the story. The Very Hungry Caterpillar still works if you can't see it, even though it's less fun that way.

With comics, the pictures are vital. And that's the distinction I'm making.

I was reading the kind of children's books that have only occasional pictures and have chapters and such with only minimal "I've never heard this word before because I'm five and I don't know what it means" assistance at five too. My parents used to read to me and taught me my letters and how they made up words before I went to "proper" school and so I learned to read earlier than most of my classmates. My school used those reading scheme type books mentioned, the first of which I remember very clearly had pictures of various acts in a circus, with the word "Look" on each page and nothing else. I thought that was completely pointless as a learn-to-read exercise for me, and said as much (my teachers loved my intelligence, but weren't fond of my outspokenness). That book? It was a comic, essentially, and not a book.

Maybe my dislike for the comic form stems from being encouraged to read books with fewer pictures and more words as a child - at seven I was reading about paleontology and natural history, spent all my pocket money and birthday money on books and shunned anything that was "for babies" and had more pictures than words, because the enjoyment for me was increased if I had to work to get it. Now I know that much of the comic form is aimed at adults, but I can't help letting my childhood prejudice colour my judgement. That child would say that comics are too easy and therefore less fun. The adult me is hopefully a bit more subtle than that, but the feeling is essentially the same. 

I'm very glad your daughter likes reading so much, and that you're doing so much to encourage her. That's wonderful. :)